Part One
Chapter 3
THE HAUNTED LANDS
S maelaer awoke early the next day. He had already packed up the little gear he would be carrying; the hunters traveled light as a rule, and he was not even encumbering himself with the usual baggage of traps. He knew they would be useless against the oxagrete. Besides, he would be walking far, much further than usual, and the greater the speed he could muster, the longer the time he could hunt.
Still, there were the necessities: the long slender ropes, made by the Mocwalwians out of he knew not what material, to be fashioned into the hunter's cunning snares: the double-edged knife, long enough (about two hands) to reach to the heart of a thriddahype in a single thrust; the spearcastans for starting his campfire, although Smaelaer found their use a tedius and frustrating exercise, and the smoke from a fire would clear out all the game downwind (unless the fuel was blowantreow); and enough dried meat and (on other trips) pressed coecil to sustain him up to three days - no longer - as all the Traeppedelfere hunters were trained in the art of foraging for their daily food, and would only need to carry extra food against the possibility of an injury, or an extended storm. These things, along with a few sundries like a coil of lashing thong and a spare water bladder (excepting the knife, which was sheathed and strapped against his outer thigh) were systematically laid out on a great skin of stitched hides that measured perhaps five ells square. Skins were tanned and worked and stretched to a thin, soft and elastic, though tough, material, and the hunters used them for a wide variety of purposes; on the hunt it was carefully rolled and folded around the equipment and tied up with a thong to form a kind of rucksack.
Smaelaer frowned as he lifted the bundle and slung it over his shoulder. The pack was quite compact and light without the traps. It reminded him all the more about his unwelcome quest. He mentally rechecked the inventory of his equipment as he hung a full water bladder around his neck. Reaching down, he touched the sheathed knife on his leg - he was so used to wearing it that he couldn't be sure it was there without actually touching it with his hand. Satisfied that he had not forgotten anything, he silently walked out into the black tunnel leading to the hunters' entrance to the mines, shaking his head.
But he soon emerged from the stale clammy air of the caves.
It was a very young day. A few bright stars were still visible in the sky at the night end even as the tentative glow of morning whelmed across the day end. Immediately the welling choruses of the various grunddwellan and treowdwellan came to Smaelaer's ears: the dawn symphony of the night creatures' lullabyes, interlaced with the day creatures' alarms.
It was quite dim yet on the mountainside under the sceadutreows; even so, the Traeppedelfere blinked as his pupils narrowed. His nostrils flared to the rich musky mix of forest scents which engulfed him, borne on a gentle but chill breeze. He faced the cool air and extended his long tongue, then licked the roof of his mouth. Thriddahypes! He could not see them yet, but somewhere upwind he knew several were there - he could taste them. For a moment he was tempted to track them down before he began his longer journey; it wasn't often that the scent was caught so close to the mines. But this time he was in haste. Smaelaer grimaced at the irony of the situation, and turned away from the breeze and the scent, and toward his appointed path.
The trails just outside the mines, even at the lesser-used entrances, were well worn and wide. For many many long seasons the hunters had lightly embarked on their forays and had returned laden with their spoils over these pathways, and for countless paces from the mines the paths had become established thoroughfares. Even in the direction Smaelaer was now going he would be following a clear trail for days, before it gave way into a scrabbling stony scar, and then finally faded altogether. Smaelaer sighed again under the weight of his mission, but as he began striding along the path, that strange exhilaration swept over him again.
The Traeppedelferes were an intensely social race; interdependent physically and emotionally. Extended solitude was intolerable to them, and many a hunter had been found in the remote forests, depressed, starving, and listless, after having simply given up. They called this drygeslaep, and it was the bane of the hunters, for they knew not what caused it, or how to avoid it. They knew only that it struck far from the mines in distance or in days. Once these drygeslaep hunters would be brought back to the mines and amongst other Traeppedelferes, however, their mysterious hopelessness would vanish (if not already too advanced), and they could be retrained to tasks which would allow them to remain in the caves.
The mines, then, gradually began to develop a sort of mystique of wholesomeness, a preternatural aura of belonging, in the collective subconscience of the culture. While the deeps were attributed this sense of home, the distances seemed to grow in mysterious danger. It was partly for this reason that the Haunted Lands were shunned by the race, for they were quite a long trek out. Hunting in pairs solved the problem of drygeslaep, but proved to be terribly inefficient; owing to the extra noise, or the time spent in pointless arguments, or something. Two hunters in tandem would nearly always bring in less than either of them would bring if hunting alone. And despite the debilitating drygeslaep, the Traeppedelferes as individuals, and their race as a whole, had no developed notions of love, or friendship, or filiality. They procreated solely through instinctive drives, and the fabric of their warped society was loosely woven with the questionable woof of social expediency.
What Smaelaer felt as he took to the trail he was at a loss to explain, though, or even to describe. Each time he turned his back on the mines a heady gust of independence would blow through his psyche. He did not feel, as many of the other hunters had described their departures, that he was leaving life itself behind, but rather that he was kicking off a snare that had errantly caught his foot, or removing a thorny trailer that had snagged his arm. The rush of a bohemian freedom took him, and were it not for his duty to bring meat to the tribe Smaelaer felt he could happily roam the mountain passes indefinitely.
He once attempted to tell another hunter about this sense of release, but the Traeppedelferean vocabulary was lacking in terms of emotion. He recalled the surprised and suspicious look he had received, and decided, rather than risk being named cnawannawiht, that he should keep close counsel on the subject. As a result of this exultation of wanderlust, though, Smaelaer took to very long hunts, which furthered his growing reputation as a great hunter. He never failed to find game, and he would remain at the mines on his return only a short while before he was off again.
He didn't reflect, as the footloose feeling came to him once more, that this very feeling had ultimately led to him being selected for the onerous task at hand. He only felt the combined sights and scents of the forest morning clear his head and loosen his joints, as he fell into his rapid gait.
After a while, Smaelaer began to give some thought to the particulars of his hunt. Assuming he could find an oxagrete to begin with, which in itself was far from a sure thing, he knew he had better have some idea of how he was going to handle it when the time came. He racked his memory for every detail about oxagretes he had ever heard, which was not too productive, because what little he had heard was exaggerated at best or obviously invented outright at worst. Garnering little comfort from this line of thought, he turned his mind to other things, as the day broke and the mountainside passed by. He would have, he knew, at least two or three days to come up with a plan before he would need one, and at that moment everything was pleasant and alive.
All that day Smaelaer succeeded in putting off any further thought of the hunt. He browsed the heavy berry-shrubs, and the crisp (though rather bland) weodthufs, and drank from the many icy bubbling streams he crossed. In spite of (or perhaps because of) his self-imposed distraction he traveled at a good pace well on into the dusk, covering much ground before he stopped to rest for the night.
Although the morning had risen to clear skies, throughout the day the high clouds had drifted in over the mountains, and Smaelaer knew that it would be a dark, if not also wet, night. He rolled himself in the waterproof skin on a flat place he managed to find just on the uphill side of a sceadutreow, and tried again to think of a plan to catch and kill the oxagrete.
In his mind it had become "the oxagrete." Regardless of old Goffe's suggestion that two or more would be appreciated, Smaelaer dismissed any notion of a multiple killing out of hand. It was preposterous. His whole hope was to kill one oxagrete without getting himself killed in the process, and he gave his now dozing mind up to that goal. How he was to haul the hulking carcass all the way back to the mines did not concern him then; he could afford to worry about that after the impossibly happy chance of a kill.
The nighttime chorus of small creatures was swelling again, and the wind changed direction, bringing with it the sweet aroma of a distant blowantreow. Smaelaer envisioned a diabolical network of trip-ropes and snares, yanking the legs out from under the charging oxagrete in three directions, while he, having deftly decoyed the beast to its capture (though he knew not how), turned and eyed it with a cold stare. He would take his knife, lash it to a pole, spear-fashion, and with one mighty stroke fell the beast.
All was darkness now, and Smaelaer could open even his inner eyelids, and gaze up into the great branches overhead. How could he lure the beast? The wafting scent of the blowantreow blossoms, the throbbing dull roar of the nocturnals, and the well-earned stiffness of a long day's walk worked on him with the usual result. Smaelaer, in the midst of his plans, fell asleep.
He was again facing the oxagrete. His snares and ropes set, he had to draw it to the trap. The beast lunged; he dodged aside just in time as a sharp horn-tip grazed his arm, drawing blood. Enraged and insane at the sight and scent of it, the monster drew itself up. It was twice Smaelaer's height - no, thrice! and its enormous eyes were aflame with hatred. The great horns sprouted new, sharper points - but how? The animal bellowed as it bared row upon row of hideous grinding teeth, its foul exhalations blasting Smaelaer's face with a sickening odor of fermented blowanslaep. But the oxagrete is dumb; whence this terrifying roaring? No matter, Smaelaer thought in desperation, he had to draw it to the snares, and stab it before it could free itself.
Smaelaer unwillingly turned his back to the beast and felt the near-miss of another lunge as the hot panting noisome breath struck his neck. And he ran, ran with the speed of the wind - no, faster. The sceadutreows flew by in a blur, the ground rose and fell chaotically as his legs shrank and stretched to meet it - and still the oxagrete was closing in. The snares were in sight far ahead; he led the chase at a dizzying speed, but the trip-rope got no closer, and the beast was almost on top of him, screaming, slavering, whipping those endlessly wide, sharp, writhing horns from side to side in an insane frenzy. Still the rope was a dim, distant goal, and they sped as if one body, no longer seeming to touch the ground in their wild haste. Suddenly, Smaelaer gave one last great, desperate flying leap across the expanse - impossible! - but reaching out, stretching out past all sinew-snapping limits, miraculously, he pulled the trip-rope, and the snares whipped into action.
The tables were turned. Immediately he was standing, tall, confident, hoisting his spear, looking down without pity on the squirming, whining oxagrete, hopelessly enmeshed in innumerable knots. With a great surge of strength he thrust the spearpoint down, straight to the heart of the monster - but it was not a spear! it was an oxagrete horn in his hand. He stared at it dumbfounded - but no matter, even better! - the beast will die upon its own weapon. He prepared anew to skewer the condemned, he looked down to fix his target - and stared at his own breast beneath the horn! For suddenly it was not the oxagrete at all, but he himself caught in the snares! and it was not he wielding the horn, but the fierce lowing beast.
Unable to free his arms or legs, Smaelaer struggled to no avail. The oxagrete bellowed a horrible bray of conquest, and Smaelaer became aware of another monstrous face close to his own, and then another, and another; and he shuddered a long chilling shudder, for suddenly the scene was all too familiar. He was surrounded by wild oxagretes, pawing the ground, smelling blood. They took one step closer to him, then another; one step more and they would commence ripping him apart with terrible savor. He stared into their flaming eyes, smelt their vile breath, felt the stinging drops of their flowing drool...
He awoke, violently sitting bolt upright in a cold sweat, as another spear of lightning rent the skies. He saw the branches over and around him waving and dodging crazily in the wind, and then the thunder rolled in, deafening, as only thunder in the mountains can be. In a flash of panic he realized that his arms were pinned - but only by the clinging wrap of the wet skin. The night had turned into an ugly one with a cold, blowing, driving rain. He struggled in alarm to free himself of the wrap, breathing heavily, striving to calm himself. When would he be free of that nightmare?
But then, an idea came to him. More than an idea; a revelation. When he had been surrounded by the oxagretes that time now long ago, he had inexplicably fallen asleep, and the beasts had spared him. Maybe they don't attack motionless prey, perhaps the dumb beasts take sleep for death, or... he didn't know. But the undeniable fact remained: he had slept, and had not been harmed. The first semblence of a real hope of success came to him then, and he was too excited to sleep for some time as he plotted how to best use this new insight. Smaelaer sat there thinking, alone on the mountainside, in the rain, in the dark.
The dawn found him with his back to the bole of the sceadutreow, sleeping a peaceful sleep, the skin spread across his legs and stomachs. It was a grey morning: the rain had slowed from a drenching cascade to a soaking mist and, while Smaelaer roused himself, stopped. He listened to the hesitant chirping and squeaking of the waking fauna, and inspected his gear. Everything he had brought with him was very wet, and he cursed the nightmare that had prompted him to throw off his covering when he awakened from it. His ropes and thongs were soaked; they now weighed at least double what they had the day before, as did the skin. Grumbling to himself, he pondered whether he should take the time to let his gear dry out before going on, or not. The air was heavy with moisture, and the sun would not shine for much of the morning at least; the clouds were thick and low. He resolved to pack up and walk. Nothing could dry out on such a morning, and besides, he was used to carrying a much heavier load.
The sky did not clear all that day, or the next, and Smaelaer hiked. The wet thongs of the pack and the water bladder cut into his neck and shoulders, and the stinging sphex, which only seem to torment those already made miserable by something else, harried him incessantly. Even so, he made good time, and the road narrowed to a path, and the path to a trail, and the trail was disappearing altogether when Smaelaer stopped at the dimming of the third day out from the mines.
He was nearing the reaches of the morwetraeppes, the apprentice hunters, whose duty it was to wander far, learn the lay of the lands, and flush game back in toward the hunters. He had passed the soggy remains of one of their bonfires earlier in the day; it had been set several days ago to make smoke that would cause the thriddahypes to flee into the waiting snares of the hunters. The morwetraeppe who had been out here had done his or her job well; Smaelaer had had no sight or scent or taste of thriddahype since he had first left the caves.
The wind came up in the night as he slept, and the fourth day broke to a clear, cold, crisp breeze. Smaelaer stretched, shivering, and hung his still damp gear across the branches and brambles as the sun peeked down over the mountain peaks. The land around him was only remotely familiar; he had traveled it before, but rarely, and there were really no unusual landmarks to help distinguish this mountainside from much of the rest of the territory Smaelaer had hunted. But then, not knowing the ground was really not a cause for concern. The Traeppedelferes' sense of direction was for all intents and purposes infallible. They always knew their whereabouts, or at least from which direction they had come, and the hunters of the tribe had honed this instinct to a fine point. Smaelaer put himself on the alert: the hunt for oxagrete would begin now in earnest. He was near the place where he had sighted the oxagrete as a morwetraeppe, and even though he was perhaps a two- or three-days' run from the Haunted Lands yet, he could ill afford to be surprised by the game.
In the time spent walking the last few days Smaelaer had developed a plan.
He hoped to find a narrow ravine or steep-walled valley in the forest somewhere. Here he could completely blanket with snares the entrance and exit, if the ravine was narrow enough. He carried only so much rope, and although he had brought much more than usual, there were still only so many snares he could fashion, depending on the proximity of any whip-branches, ground cover, and so on. If such a vale could be found, and if an oxagrete could be forced or lured into it, Smaelaer planned to show himself between the two sets of snares as bait. Once the oxagrete approaches, the closer set of snares may immediately catch it; if the beast avoids tripping the ropes and comes closer to him, he will feign death. Then, when the beast leaves, the snares on one side or the other may be tripped and snag the game. If the oxagrete gets past them again and leaves the valley, he will rise and taunt the beast, and start the whole process over again, until the beast is finally caught, and killed.
Smaelaer had great confidence in his abilities. His confidence was justified to this extent: his snares were triggered at the touch of a hair, were powerfully sprung, and were virtually invisible in the cunning camouflage he would fashion. Any indecision he was suffering from was not over what to do, or how to do it, but where.
The vague legends of the Haunted Lands whispered a troubling rumor to his dreams, which on waking he chose to ignore. After all, he told himself, he had walked the forbidden ground once before and returned. He could only hope that his ideal vale was there to be found, and that he would have time to lay his snares before he needed them.
He was pacing slower now, scanning the woods, sniffing and tasting the breeze on the lookout for the oxagrete. The trail had wholly failed by the afternoon of the fourth day, and he was forced to carefully pick his way along the sometimes rugged mountainside, which also slowed him down.
In the days that followed, he began to detect traces of thriddahypes now and again, but no evidence of an oxagrete. Even so, that was heartening in a way, because he had not yet decided where to lay his snares. He knew that he by now must be well into the Haunted Lands (one-hand-and-one days' run out from the mines) and he seriously expected to see some kind of apparition or supernatural manifestation as evidence of this, but this part of the forest was no different in any way from any other part he had ever seen. He knew that his narrow valley could probably only be found high up the slopes of the mountains, and as he searched he thought of the long walk home, and hoped he would have a burden to bear. He realized that his life may depend on it. The Yldras were powerful and, worse, arbitrary and unscrupulous, and Goffe (who was a Maegenyldra) would not hesitate to condemn him if he failed. These sobering thoughts were hanging constantly in the back of his mind.
Finally, one-hand-and-four days out, Smaelaer found what seemed to be an acceptable ravine. The banks were much too steep for even the nimble thriddahypes to climb, much less the heavy oxagrete, and there were several young and green but sturdy sceadutreows with perfect spring-branches growing near the bottom. The gully rose rapidly, too, and Smaelaer noted with approval that any game could enter from only one direction. This meant that he could concentrate all his snares to protect just one entrance, not two as he had envisioned, and that one entrance could be completely blanketed with snares. Laying out his gear as far up the ravine as he could easily walk, he unpacked, and set to work.
All the rest of that day he toiled, until it was finally too dark for even his night eyes to be sure of the winding trace he had left himself through the network of snares. It would not do to be caught in his own net, and he decided to wait for the dawn, and more light, to finish.
Smaelaer had had his mind occupied with his task all day and hadn't noticed anything unusual, but now, as he stood and gingerly stepped back toward his simple camp, he was overcome by an uneasy apprehension... of being watched. Silently leaping over the last hidden loop, he whirled and crouched, scanning the opening of the ravine for spying eyes. The Traeppedelfere's eyesight was very keen, and the night was clear, and the starlight was all he needed. But he saw nothing down the ravine. He muttered to himself that he was letting the legends of the lands go to his head. He relaxed, and walked back to his things to prepare for sleep. As he lay back, he thought of the next step. The snares were very nearly complete, and would take only a short while the next morning to finish, and then the worst part of the hunt would be upon him.
The wait.
He was not disappointed: he had a long wait indeed. The next morning he put the finishing touches to his snares - as long as there was not a heavy rain to soften the ground and loosen his stakes, they would catch anything that would venture into the ravine. He was done before the sunlight climbed down into the steep-walled gorge; and after he carefully went out of the ravine to forage, and delicately tip-toed back in with perhaps two days' provisions, he made himself as comfortable as he could, and settled in for the seige.
Four days later Smaelaer was still waiting. He had gone out into the wider valley twice more: once for food, and once to see if there were any signs of game, any game. The weather had been quite cooperative all this time, but even good weather was becoming monotonous to the increasingly frustrated hunter. He had sharpened his knife-blades to an edge he could see through; he recoiled and stowed, and then re-recoiled and stowed again the rope he had left over; he had checked the snares more times than he could remember; he was getting sick of weodthuf and berries. And what was worse was that he had not detected a trace of a whiff of an oxagrete. He had not even heard any thriddahypes, although he had tasted one on a morning breeze blowing up the ravine once. Time was drawing short, and he would soon have to be on his way back to the mines. He resolved to wait out the rest of that day, the two-hands-and-third day out, and begin scouting for another ravine the next morning.
Close on to dusk a thin mist began to fall, and the sky was overcast. He had been so disgusted with the hunt so far that he hadn't even noticed the clouds blow in, and the prospect of his snares being washed out just seemed to fit in with his overall mood. He was rolling himself in his wrap for the night when suddenly the nape of his neck chilled, and his hair stood: again, he had that uncanny feeling that he was being watched. Again, nothing could be seen, but the feeling did not subside for a long time, and Smaelaer was glad of his decision to leave that place the next day.
At dawn Smaelaer woke to the sounds of a frightened thriddahype. He sat up and looked around, and saw that the clouds had lowered in the night. He was now above them, and a thick fog covered the ravine, and valley beyond, below his snares. The prospect of these Haunted Lands now was mysterious indeed; with the deep clear sky above, the ravine gully where he sat still shaded by the mountainside, the thick white mat of fog below as far as he could see, and the eerie howl of the terrified creature.
Smaelaer could not tell how far away the thriddahype might be: in the heavy fog the sound might be carried far, and he could not taste its scent because there was no air stirring. He cursed the fog for another reason, also: it would be senseless to scout out the area until it lifted or dispersed. He decided to check the stakes to see whether the drizzle had done any mischief, and was absorbed in this task when suddenly the screams of the thriddahype were renewed - this time, by the sound of it, right at the mouth of his ravine, though he could not yet see it through the mist, or taste it with the air so still. He stood, and suddenly his heart jumped into his throat as the biggest thriddahype he had ever seen burst through the fog, not ten paces in front of him.
The creature's hind leg was injured, and bleeding terribly, and its eyes stared impossibly as it lurched with surprising speed into Smaelaer's view. Smaelaer shouted in alarm at the startling sudden materialization of the thing; then, seeing it was only a thriddahype, albeit a very large one, he waved his arms and shouted again in an attempt to scare it off before it tripped his snares. The thing didn't seem to be afraid of him, though - it was almost as if it didn't even see him, and it continued its flight up the ravine directly toward Smaelaer.
There was nothing the hunter could do but watch as the three-legged beast ran directly into his snares, and its legs were violently jerked out from under it, and it was hoisted into the air above the gully floor, splay-legged and screaming. Smaelaer saw his long labors ruined in a fleeting moment and was beside himself with wrath. "Moc!" he cursed at the thriddahype, himself, the fog, the Yldras, and anything else he could think of at the time. "Moc, moc, moc!"
But an instant later his voice dropped from the crest of indignation to the trough of misfortune. "Moc!" he whispered in shock under his breath. The thriddahype's pursuer had burst through the curtain of fog.
There, huge, black against the billowy background, was an oxagrete, nostrils flared, following the scent of the thriddahype's blood through the impenetrable mists. It stood still a moment, snorting, legs wide and braced on the narrow floor of the ravine, and considered the strange sight of the levitated thriddahype before it. It saw the ropes, and followed them with its eyes to the sides of the ravine, first one way then the other - and then locked its burning gaze on Smaelaer, who stood as if turned to stone.
The great beast very deliberately lowered its sharp curved horns, stepped slowly beneath the frantically struggling thriddahype, and proceeded to rend the helpless creature to pieces in a horrifying and gory display of furious butchery.
Smaelaer could not rouse his limbs to obey at first, so great was his shock and dismay, until a piece of the warm gooey entrails sent flying in every direction by the bloody riot slapped against his chest with a nauseating plop! and slid stickily down to his feet, painting him with gore. The trance was lifted, he was released, and he turned tail and scrambled as fast as he could go up the ravine, having no other thought than escape, forgetting his now utterly ruined plans, forgetting everything in a fever of panic.
The oxagrete was shaking what was left of the thriddahype's carcass to shreds in its powerful jaws, unmindful of Smaelaer's futile attempts to scale the ravine, when Smaelaer himself realized with an almost calming resolute acceptance the fact that he was trapped, and the only way out of the ravine was on the far side of the frenzied monster. A voice seemed to be calling from somewhere, "close your eyes, close your eyes," but he could not do it as he watched the great beast move slowly, menacingly, up the ravine, toward him.
He was paralyzed with dread; not exactly fear, but a terrifying vague ignorent feeling of dread; and still the oxagrete approached. "Close your eyes, close your eyes," the voice called out; but if anything Smaelaer's eyes opened yet wider; and the snorting, pawing beast came on, ever more slowly, as if to prolong the agony to intolerable lengths. Smaelaer lay sprawled against the stony ravine wall, the blood-spattered face of the oxagrete was a mere arm's length away.
"Close your eyes! Now! Close your eyes!" the voice commanded, but still the shaking twatunge could not obey, staring in horror at the steaming strips of flesh hanging on the ragged fangs of the beast. The oxagrete lowered its horns.
"Close your eyes!"
Then, just at the moment Smaelaer anticipated the searing pain of knife-sharp points ripping through him, the oxagrete closed its eyes and stood there, head bowed, as if asleep.
"Well now, well now, well now, it's about time you listened to me, you naughty thing!" said the voice.
Smaelaer, still shaking convulsively, and completely bewildered, his eyes nearly popping out of their bungs, looked around wildly. There, down the ravine, stepping out of the mist, was the old hunter.
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